Kids Toys

Cover of Players in Pigtails

Why is it that a lot of kids toys resemble real-life objects having to do with, what us adults would call, chores? Yesterday, Lucy and I were out for a walk and a little boy was playing in his yard with a toy leaf-blower. Seriously? A toy leaf-blower? He was using it correctly, pretending to clean up the yard. What satisfaction can come from that? I have been thinking about it for a while, how girls get kitchens and boys get tool benches...a part of me thinks, "well, it'll be good practice I guess," but another part of me is disgusted. Can't we just let kids be kids? Lucy does have a kitchen and a little baking set and dolls with a doll bed and stroller-which she loves, I'm not raising a feminist here, (I don't think) but I do want her to know she can do whatever she chooses and there'll be no judgment from me. It warms my heart that she loves to play catch and Bakugan and blocks over frosting cookies...I guess I feel like she has plenty of time to figure all that out---just be a kid and fly with the Tinker fairies.

On Monday we went to the library and I got a book out called, "Players in Pigtails," by Shana Corey. It's a children's story about Katie Casey, a girl who played for the AAGPBL (think "A League of Their Own,"). I was reading in the car to Lucy and I was getting choked up. It was a beautiful story about empowerment and overcoming stereotypes.

"There were farm girls and city girls, tall girls and short girls, girls from far away and girls from down the block. But no matter what they looked like or where they came from, they all had one thing in common. They all loved Baseball. Katie had never felt so at home."

So, last night Tony came to bed late because he was up playing video games with his brother. I asked him which game they were playing and he said something about being a sniper and then running to hide. It sounded a lot like games little boys might play as a kid. I thought it was so funny that as kids, we're given these "toys," to teach us what our roles should be and then we go to school and get a job, etc., and then in our free time-we just want to be kids again.